Development of accident prediction model by using artificial neural network (ANN)

Statistical or crash prediction model have frequently been used in highway safety studies. They can be used in identify major contributing factors or establish relationship between crashes and explanatory accident variables. The measurements to prevent accident are from the speed reduction, widening the roads, speed enforcement, or construct the road divider, or other else. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to develop an accident prediction model at federal road FT 050 Batu Pahat to Kluang. The study process involves the identification of accident blackspot locations, establishment of general patterns of accident, analysis of the factors involved, site studies, and development of accident prediction model using Artificial Neural Network (ANN) applied software which named NeuroShell2. The significant of the variables that are selected from these accident factors are checked to ensure the developed model can give a good prediction results. The performance of neural network is evaluated by using the Mean Absolute Percentage Error (MAPE). The study result showed that the best neural network for accident prediction model at federal road FT 050 is 4-10-1 with 0.1 learning rate and 0.2 momentum rate. This network model contains the lowest value of MAPE and highest value of linear correlation, r which is 0.8986. This study has established the accident point weightage as the rank of the blackspot section by kilometer along the FT 050 road (km 1 – km 103). Several main accident factors also have been determined along this road, and after all the data gained, it has successfully analyzed by using artificial neural network

Pembangunan dan penilaian modul berbantukan komputer bagi subjek pemasaran : Politeknik Port Dickson

Kajian ini bertujuan membangunkan Modul Berbantukan Komputer (MBK) bagi subjek Pemasaran. MBK ini dibangunkan dengan menggunakan pensian AutoPlay Media dan Flash MX. Sampel kajian ini terdiri daripada 30 orang pelajar Diploma Pemasaran di Politeknik Port Dickson. Data dikumpulkan melalui kaedah soal selidik dan dianalisis berdasarkan kekerpan, peratusan dan skor min dengan menggunakan perisian Statistical Package For Social Sciene (SPSS) versi 11.0. Dapatan kajian menunjukkan penilaian terhadap pembagunan MBK di dalam proses P&P adalah tinggi. Ini bermakna MBK ini sesuai digunakan di Politeknik Port Dickson di dalam proses P&P

Sustainable and traditional product innovation without scale and experience, but only for KIBS!

This study analyzes the ideal strategic trajectory for sustainable and traditional product innovation. Using a sample of 74 Costa Rican high-performance businesses for 2016, we employ fuzzy set analysis (qualitative comparative analysis) to evaluate how the development of sustainable and traditional product innovation strategies is conditioned by the business’ learning capabilities and entrepreneurial orientation in knowledge-intensive (KIBS) and non-knowledge-intensive businesses. The results indicate two ideal strategic configurations of product innovation. The first strategic configuration to reach maximum product innovation requires the presence of KIBS firms that have both an entrepreneurial and learning orientation, while the second configuration is specific to non-KIBS firms with greater firm size and age along with entrepreneurial and learning orientation. KIBS firms are found to leverage the knowledge-based and customer orientations that characterize their business model in order to compensate for the shortage of important organizational characteristics—which we link to liabilities or smallness and newness—required to achieve optimal sustainable and traditional product innovation.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

Study on Performance Appraisal Method of Vocational Education Teachers using PROMETHEE II

Evaluating vocational education teachers’ performance is an important link of teaching management and an important guarantee of improving teaching quality. In conducting teaching, research and community service, vocational education teachers should weight more on quality than quantity. In this context, individual habit reacts to the demanded jobs which are influenced by his/her knowledge, attitude, and skill. Teacher’s performance evaluation is nothing but a Multi Criteria Decision Making Problem (MCDM). There are several quality attributes that influence the efficiency of a potential vocational education teacher while guiding his/her students towards a positive and value added academic outcome. However, the importance of quality attributes may differ from individuals’ perspective. In other words, different attributes may have different weightage according to their priority of significance while evaluating quality/performance level of a vocational education teacher. This paper makes the vocational education teachers’ performance appraisal quantitative and determines the evaluation index based on academic performance. Criteria for performance are: teaching load, publication, research, conferencing, consultancy, services, teaching attitude, teaching content, teaching method, and teaching effect. The Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and PROMETHEE (Preference Ranking Organisation METHod for Enrichment Evaluations) II analysis were used in performance appraisal. Application feasibility of this method approach and guidelines in solving such a multi-attribute decision making problem has been described illustratively in this paper. It is also observed that this MCDM approach is a viable tool in solving the teacher selection decision problems. It allows the decision maker to rank the candidate alternatives more efficiently and easily. Keywords: performance, teaching, Analytic Hierarchy Process, PROMETHEE II

Managing Interacting Criteria: Application to Environmental Evaluation Practices

The need for organizations to evaluate their environmental practices has been recently increasing. This fact has led to the development of many approaches to appraise such practices. In this paper, a novel decision model to evaluate company’s environmental practices is proposed to improve traditional evaluation process in different facets. Firstly, different reviewers’ collectives related to the company’s activity are taken into account in the process to increase company internal efficiency and external legitimacy. Secondly, following the standard ISO 14031, two general categories of environmental performance indicators, management and operational, are considered. Thirdly, since the assumption of independence among environmental indicators is rarely verified in environmental context, an aggregation operator to bear in mind the relationship among such indicators in the evaluation results is proposed. Finally, this new model integrates quantitative and qualitative information with different scales using a multi-granular linguistic model that allows to adapt diverse evaluation scales according to appraisers’ knowledge

Port choice by intra-regional container service operators : an application of decision-making techniques to liner services between Malaysian and other Asian ports

Intra-regional container service operators are challenged to design regular and reliable liner services connecting regional ports at the lowest cost and shortest transit time while considering customer demand. This paper focuses on the selection of ports of call in regular intra-regional container services, an under-researched part of the container shipping market. A combination of decision-making techniques (i.e. Analytical Hierarchy Process, fuzzy link-based and Evidential Reasoning) are presented to assist intra-regional container service operators in selecting ports of call. The proposed methodology is empirically applied to container services between Malaysian and other nearby Asian ports. While Port Klang is the main gateway to Malaysia, the results show that other Malaysian ports should play a more prominent role in accommodating intra-Asian container services. This research can assist maritime stakeholders in evaluating intra-regional port-to-port liner service configurations. Furthermore, the novel mix of decision-making techniques complements and enriches existing academic literature on port choice and liner service configuration

Fuzzy Transfer Pricing World: On the Analysis of Transfer Pricing with Fuzzy Logic Techniques

The arm’s length analysis of international transfer prices of multinational firms lacks sound methodological approach of the so-called function and risk analysis. In practice, such analyses are descriptive. Derived from Zadeh’s mathematical theory of fuzzy sets, this paper investigates a quantitative approach to identify the function and risk pattern of related parties of multinational companies. We illustrate our fuzzy logic approach with a simple case.

Do UK universities communicate their brands effectively through their websites?

This paper attempts to explore the effectiveness of UK universities’ websites. The area of branding in higher education has received increasing academic investigation, but little work has researched how universities demonstrate their brand promises through their websites. The quest to differentiate through branding can be challenging in the university context, however. It is argued that those institutions that have a strong distinctive image will be in a better position to face a changing future. Employing a multistage methodology, the web pages of twenty UK universities were investigated by using a combination of content and multivariable analysis. Results indicated ‘traditional values’ such as teaching and research were often well communicated in terms of online brand but ‘emotional values’ like social responsibility and the universities’ environments were less consistently communicated, despite their increased topicality. It is therefore suggested that emotional values may offer a basis for possible future online differentiation